Cases of food-borne diseases up by 1.4 million from 2009: FSA

This figure, however, suggests a “very low” risk to UK consumers.

Around 2.4 million cases of food-borne diseases occur each year in the UK, up 1.4 million from the 2009 estimate, new research from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) revealed.

The latest figure, the agency said, provided a “better” estimation of the proportion of infectious intestinal disease that is due to food.

“Most of this increase is due to innovative new research into foodborne norovirus,” chief scientific adviser Guy Poppy said in a statement. “Although the percentages may appear striking, the risk to consumers remains very low for most of these pathways,” he added.

There is an estimated 380,000 cases of food-borne norovirus, which is the common cause of gastroenteritis, in the UK per year.

FSA highlighted that 37% of such cases are from eating out, 26% from takeaways, 30% from retail of open-headed lettuce, 4% from raspberries retail and 3% from oyster sale.

On average, Poppy said, an individual would contract a norovirus once in every 15,000 portions of open-headed lettuce. Oyster, however, posed the highest risk per serving, with illness likely on average once in around 160 servings.